Dispatches from a Scamdemic

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THE "NEVER AGAIN" MANTRA
This week, instead of one, longer story, I’ll begin with two shorter ones.
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Mark Oshinskie
102
BREAD, WINE, COMMUNITY AND CORONAMANIA
On the Sunday, March 2020 night of the week the Scamdemic began, I attended Spanish Catholic mass in New Brunswick, NJ, as I often do.
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Mark Oshinskie
158
BUGGING OUT
When our kids were 3, 9 and 11, and the airlines had more lenient luggage policies, we lugged our camping gear on a train to the airport and flew to…
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Mark Oshinskie
74

May 2025

ARE WE SMARTER THAN OUR ANCESTORS?
When I was a kid, the postman semi-annually delivered a booklet-sized mail-order catalog with an odd mix of hundreds of household gadgets and cheap…
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Mark Oshinskie
110
A LOSS OF FACE
During my freshman year of high school, several friends were on the wrestling team.
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Mark Oshinskie
135
RICK STEVES, THE FASCIST PLAYBOOK AND THE COVID RESPONSE
While waiting with a friend on the southbound platform at the crowded junction of Medellin, Colombia’s two Metro elevated train lines in February 2017…
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Mark Oshinskie
135
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS
In late May, 1981, in the midst of a major recession, I graduated from college.
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Mark Oshinskie
155
A PERMANENT RECORD
Most Americans who supported the lockdowns, school closures, masks, tests and shots now want to pretend that the past five years never happened.
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Mark Oshinskie
47
CASTING A CORONAMANIC SPELL
On a February, 1974 Saturday afternoon, when I was 15, I took a Greyhound bus from Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal with my Mom and little…
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Mark Oshinskie
104

April 2025

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